Politically incorrect thoughts about homosexual behavior will result in enhanced criminal sanctions under this law.

Everywhere hate crimes laws have gone into effect, they have been quickly used to intimidate, silence and punish people of faith who express deeply held religious objections to the normalization of homosexuality. [Selective deemphasis added.]

Come now! First it is 'thoughts' and then it is 'express.' A very unclever attempt at cleverly manipulating the reader into thinking this bill is going to punish people for their thoughts.

No bill is going to criminalize anyone for their thoughts, and that should be obvious to anyone. Apart from anything else, it would be completely impossible to enforce.

In fact, such laws actively discriminate against heterosexual Christians who are victims of crime, since they will get less legal protection than homosexual victims.

And since "sexual orientation" is nowhere defined in the legislation, this law will give pedophiles, voyeurs, and exhibitionists special protections, which is why the bill has correctly been called "The Pedophile Protection Act."

"Correctly"? The law should protect those who need it, and no one that I have heard of are going after heterosexual Christians because they are heterosexual Christians*. Pedophiles, who have been convicted for their crime, should be given protection against vigilantism. I personally think pedophiles who abuse children sexually should be locked away forever, but whatever the law says on the matter should not leave room for them being unprotected against hate-crimes. That sort of behavior leads to anarchy. Man.

Section 6 -Amends the federal criminal code to prohibit willfully causing bodily injury to any person through the use of fire, a firearm, a dangerous weapon, or an explosive or incendiary device because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person.

Nothing there about heterosexual Christians sitting at home thinking - or expressing - bigoted thoughts of any kind. In fact, it is explicitly stated that they can do so even in public (or, at least according to this bill they cannot be prohibited from doing so):

Section 8 -Declares that nothing in this Act shall be construed to prohibit the exercise of constitutionally-protected free speech.

This bill is about violent hate-crimes. Construing it to be about thoughts is disingenuous.

* Notice that in section 6 it says "because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person." Heterosexual Christians are equally protected under this bill. What to conclude from the AFA's dislike of this bill? It reeks of indignation that the law will not allow them to follow the word of the Bible and bomb abortion clinics and so forth.

Pleiotropy comes from the Greek πλείων pleion, meaning "more", and τρέπειν trepein, meaning "to turn, to convert". It designates the occurrence of a single gene affecting multiple traits, and is a hugely important concept in evolutionary biology.

I'm a postdoc at UC Santa Barbara.

All Many aspects of evolution interest me, but my research focus is currently on microbial evolution, adaptive radiation, speciation, fitness landscapes, epistasis, and the influence of genetic architecture on adaptation and speciation.